When it comes to stories of making and losing millions of pounds, we’re usually reading about impulsive lottery winners.
It turns out though, it happens to celebrities too.
Welsh singer Charlotte Church, 38, has been a star since she was just a young child, after impressing Andrew Lloyd Webber with a rendition of ‘Pie Jesu’ on live television.
Her career started there and went from strength to strength, and by 2007 she’d sold over 10 million records around the globe thanks to her impressive soprano singing abilities.
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Charlotte embarked on an incredible career as a pop artist and at the height of her fame, her net worth was reported to be a staggering £25 million.
Fast forward to now, though - and Charlotte has proclaimed in an interview with Closer that she’s ‘no longer’ a millionaire.
In 2010, Charlotte bought a six-bedroom mansion near Cardiff, ‘The Spinney’, for £1.5 million - then sold it in August last year (2023) for £2 million.
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She told the publication she ‘massively downsized’, and now lives in a semi-detached home with her husband Jonathan Powell.
She explained further: “What mattered to me when I bought the house is it was absolutely beautiful and close to the forest and it was a big mansion house.
"We had a school there for a bit and a studio. When it is used by the community, it makes sense, but when it is not used, it doesn’t. We want to be in the mainframe and be involved in life and what it feels like.”
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Charlotte also went on to recall the big change in her life when she first began making money, she said: “When I made money, I did say to my dad when I was 14, “I am not sure about this showbiz stuff. I am really not having a good time” and he was like, “Just stick at it as we don’t get these opportunities”.”
Heartbreakingly, she admitted that child stardom made her feel like ‘a commodity’ and ‘used’, which echoes the same sentiment of a 2022 interview with the star. At the time, Charlotte told The Guardian she felt like ‘a thing to be sold’.
Charlotte has also admitted that she wasn’t always inspired by her career.
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She said: “I did get to a stage in my teenage years, about 16 or 17, when I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can sing this s**t anymore.”
The singer largely disappeared from public life but is now singing again and it is completely on her own terms. She said: “I am making music again but this time it is really my soul.”
Charlotte’s openness about her finances is a breath of fresh air, but it’s not the first time she’s divulged.
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In 2014 she told BBC One: “I will have to work for the rest of my life. Not because I want to but because I have to.”
She also starred in reality show Charlotte Church’s Dream Build in 2022 where she admitted she had spent ‘pretty much all’ of her life savings renovating a 16th century mansion previously owned by Laura Ashley in a bid to transform it into a spiritual retreat space called ‘The Dreaming’.
The centre is still going strong, and Charlotte noted her work on it has been 'joyful, expanding and expansive'.
Kya Buller